Last year, the artist and entrepreneur Ramdane Touhami and his stylish wife, Victoire de Taillac-Touhami, revived Buly 1803, a 19th-century perfumery that once provided French high society with signature scents. Their chic Rue Bonaparte boutique in the Sixth Arrondissement, with its cabinet-of-curiosities shelves, apothecary drawers and tiled turquoise floors, looks straight out of the Directoire era. It’s a nod to the brand’s history, which the couple — who have also been behind the success of Cire Trudon candles — invokes with their new line of exquisite all-natural beauty products. Nail polishes, for instance, are colored with chemical-free resins, while luxurious shaving cream is accompanied by a pamphlet from the 1800s on the art of grooming. Also new: an expanded line of sophisticated fragrances that includes Hinoki (a woodsy Japanese cypress) and rich, sweet Heliotrope, each wrapped in beautiful packaging that evokes the company’s Napoleonic roots.

A restless anxiety runs through the clothing of the 30-year-old designer, photographer and video artist Gosha Rubchinskiy, reflecting the complicated past and uncertain future of his native Russia. Raised on a diet of Michael Jackson videos and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, Rubchinskiy says his early designs were costumes modeled after those worn by the flamboyant Freddie Mercury. Underground magazines later turned him on to the music and rave scenes of the generation born after the collapse of the Soviet Union; skateboarder culture in particular became an obsession and an inspiration. Rubchinskiy has since moved beyond streetwear — and into Dover Street Market — but his work still smacks of youthful irreverence: His latest collection included sweatshirts with the word “sport” printed in Cyrillic and Chinese, and pants, loose, acid-washed and cinched at the waist with shoelaces.

The NoHo boutique C.H.C.M. has just debuted its house line, which includes numerous collaborations. Clockwise from top left: wool bucket hat, a special project with Paa, $120; bonded-wool jacket, a special project with Mackintosh, $895; backpack, a special project with John Chapman, $395; C.H.C.M. cashmere gloves, $95; reversible scarf, a special project with Drakes, $315; waxed quilted coat, a special project with Death to Tennis, $895.Credit Courtesy C.H.C.M.

“I’m quite aware of what’s out there, and I never wanted to be like other stores,” Sweetu Patel says about C.H.C.M., his celebrated New York men’s wear boutique which has just launched its debut collection. The Indian-born, British-raised Patel — a former furniture designer and one-time founder of the high-end contemporary-furniture gallery Citizen: Citizen — started C.H.C.M. out of his Brooklyn apartment in August 2008, went online seven months later and opened his Bond Street location four years ago. Despite the nod to tradition in its name (which originally stood for “Clinton Hill Classic Menswear”), the store has offered ahead-of-the-curve clothing from the beginning. Its stock, which included brands like Ovadia & Sons, Arpenteur and Sunspel when they were virtually unknown, often blurred the lines between sportswear, workwear and suiting. Read more…

There are fashion prodigies, and then there’s Esteban Cortazar. The designer debuted his first collection at New York Fashion Week at the age of 17 – the youngest person ever to do so – before moving to Paris at 23 to take the helm of creative director at Emanuel Ungaro, where he remained for two years. More recently, he has released capsule collections for Net-a-Porter under his own name, earning him countless “comeback kid” monikers in the press. Now 30, still living in Paris and armed with new backers, Cortazar is preparing for a full relaunch of his namesake line. And the spring/summer 2015 show, which will be held tomorrow at his spacious Marais studio, is shaping up to be one of Paris Fashion Week’s most anticipated events.

The collection, seen for the first time here, represents a conceptual step forward for Cortazar. The designer says he felt a lot of “tension and uncertainty” over the past two years, a time in which he struggled to find investors to jump-start his label. “I just started to think about how I could make the fabrics feel the way I was feeling,” he says. Some pieces cling to the body like armor, while others unravel like paper streamers. Leather and metal hardware reference a favorite childhood activity of Cortazar’s, horseback riding at his family’s Colombian farm.

Cortazar likens the overall effect to a girl who “doesn’t want to be so immaculate anymore – so she releases herself completely.” And in that moment, he says, “that’s when she really finds herself.”

In his first three years as one of London’s most-watched men’s wear designers, Craig Green, 28, made papier-mâché luggage, constructed hats out of smashed-up wood planks and built “wearable sculptures” using cardboard boxes that looked tie-dyed. He hand-painted every inch of the dizzying canvas ensembles in his fall 2014 collection. He designed skirts and tunics for men. But the provocations were a preamble to his London fashion week solo debut in June, when Green sent out barefoot models in garments that were Zen yet vulnerable, technically masterful but humble in appearance, altogether fluid in hues of ipecac black, deep-water navy, asylum white and hospital-gown blue — clothes so alive with emotion that people in the audience cried. (Really.) “Each collection begins with a mood,” says the designer, who currently lives at home with his parents and who, until his first year at Central Saint Martins, had never even read a fashion magazine. After establishing emotion, he then focuses on the raw materials: “What can the fabric do? What is it good at?” he asks. The most important thing, he continues, is for “each piece of cloth to feel human.”

Prabal Gurung‘s runway shoe collaborations with Casadei, Nicholas Kirkwood and Manolo Blahnik have, in recent seasons, proven as creative as his clothes. Now, for spring/summer 2015, the New York-based Nepalese designer is launching his first complete footwear range under his own label. Inspired by Gurung’s favorite artists — Tracey Emin, Zaha Hadid, Cecily Brown, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cindy Sherman and Frida Kahlo — the heels, flats and boots will appear for the first time at his runway show on Saturday. “We kept to how we design clothes — mixing luxurious textures and vibrant colors,” Gurung explains. Styles are finished off with black insoles for a graphic effect, while the spiky silver buckles, he says, “give everything that bite.”

The fabric for Caroline Fuss's debut collection was sourced from weavers in Guatemala.Credit

Caroline Fuss had just completed a Proenza Schouler design internship when she visited Guatemala for the first time in 2011. Impressed by the quality and intricacy of the weavings in the village markets she visited, the Australian-born, New York-based designer set out to build a sustainable fashion line that would utilize and promote what she saw as an untapped textile resource. The result is Harare, named after the Zimbabwean town where Fuss’s mother and grandmother were raised. Almost every piece in the line is comprised of fabric woven by small groups of Guatemalan artisans, many of whom are the tenth generation to practice their trade; the garments are sewn or knitted in New York or Los Angeles.

Though Fuss works directly with the weavers, and even lives with them during her frequent trips to Guatemala, her hosts speak an indigenous form of Spanish that Fuss has yet to master. The language barrier has given rise to a uniquely nonverbal form of collaboration. “It is a very special interaction,” she says. “Our ability to be creative partners without the spoken word is so instinctive and really makes you feel incredibly in touch with just being human.”

Harare ranges from $400 to $1300 and is available at Intermix stores and intermix.com.

Sofia Coppola photographed looks from Calder’s fall/winter 2014 collection in her own apartment.Credit

Sofia Coppola has long acted as muse to marquee fashion designers like Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld (she interned at Chanel as a teenager). She has also directed commercials for Dior’s fragrance Miss Dior. Now the director of the upcoming live-action adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” is lending her talent to a lesser-known name: Calder, a made-in-L.A. label started last year by her cousin-in-law Amanda Blake. Coppola recently shot the look book for Calder’s fall/winter 2014 collection, a series of soft jersey tees, tanks and T-shirt dresses whose easygoing aesthetic dovetails with Coppola’s own. “I tried to show the line how I would wear it,” says Coppola, who shot the images in her New York apartment so as to feel “intimate and basic.” The results have the same warm, personal quality as Coppola’s films. “I just tried to show the clothes in a way that felt real.”

Left coasters may have long since ceased to worry about being underdressed, but from a factory nestled under the 10 freeway in Los Angeles, two labels are reinventing what it can look like to be comfortable in your own clothes. “California is about the idea of adventure and freedom,” says the designer Kyle Ng, who grew up near Berkeley with a rock-climbing father who planted flags all over Yosemite. Ng’s men’s wear line AXS Folk Technology, which debuted two seasons ago, draws on the state’s pioneer spirit as well as the practical demands of communing with nature: “For me, the idea of quality comes from the sense that you can do anything in it,” Ng says, “that your clothes won’t break.”

AXS Folk Technology doesn’t just draw inspiration from the Pacific air and the days washed in light. The landscape is baked into the process: shirts are made of sun-cured fabric, while a pair of pants tailored with a three-panel crotch gusset — a necessity for rock climbing — sport a hand-dyed spotted pattern inspired by Ng’s hobby of cultivating fungus and slime molds. “I love generative design, to see patterns vein out and grow organically,” he says. Read more…

At a time when fashion moves at an ever-more-rapid speed, Talitha — a London-based label founded in 2013 by the fashion editor Kim Hersov and the textile entrepreneur Shon Randhawa — offers a welcome change of pace. With an emphasis on traditional Indian craftsmanship, exceptional fabrics and fuss-free silhouettes, it provides an elevated vision of bohemian chic. From kimono wrap jackets to hand-embroidered peasant blouses, butter-soft suede capes and block-printed tunics with tassel adornments, each piece is designed with longevity in mind.

The brand was “born out of a need to find beautifully cut vacation clothes that are individual and timeless,” explains Hersov. The first capsule collection, for spring 2013, was made by local artisans at Randhawa’s own atelier in New Delhi. Natalie Kingham, the buying director of London’s influential Matches boutique, snapped up their first collection as an exclusive, which “gave us the confidence to really go for it,” Randhawa says. Read more…